Maiopatagium


Maiopatagium is an extinct genus of euharamiyids which existed in Asia during the Jurassic period. The type species is Maiopatagium furculiferum, which was described from the Tiaojishan Formation by Zhe-Xi Luo in 2017; it lived in what is now the Liaoning region of China during the late Jurassic. It possessed a patagium between its limbs and presumably had similar lifestyle to living flying squirrels and colugos. Maiopatagium and Vilevolodon, described concurrently, offer clues to the ways various synapsids have taken to the skies over evolutionary time scales. A second species, M. sibiricum, was described from the Bathonian aged Itat Formation in 2019